After a great deal of fretting and coddling through the winter and spring, all of our 15 tomatoes varieties are ripening now. Sometime in September we’ll have a tasting report. Meanwhile, here are their names.

There has been plenty going on around here, chicken-wise and not, but today we say goodbye to Amanda. She was an easter-egger and at six years old, the most senior chicken we’ve had. She was sweet, easily picked up, happy to sit on a lap and always demanding “rooster attention”. This spring we’ve been surprised by how many eggs she’s laid (a lot). Amanda was the top of the pecking order, a firm and wise leader. The girls come into the yard from the run every afternoon and, shortly after stretching her legs a bit, she went back in the henhouse where she seems to have passed peacefully.